Educate, Educate, Educate! Why Education-Based Marketing Can Grow Your Business!
First of all — what the heck is Education-Based Marketing? Education-Based Marketing helps you reach a wider audience by offering valuable information and not just a sales pitch like most of your competition. It allows you to give potential customers something of value rather than trying to sell them something out of the gate.
So you are thinking — why is this important, I just want to sell them something, right?
Remember — sales is about building rapport not breaking it. When you sell or pitch, you are often breaking rapport because no one wants to be sold. When you educate you build rapport. You are increasing your credibility when you provide the prospect with valuable data and they will come to appreciate you.
Offering an education that helps the buyer is going to get more buyer interest.
If the information is actually good and useful it automatically repositions you in the mind of the buyer as much more of an expert then all their competitors you’re teaching them things about their own business that they might not know.
If you think and plan strategically you will find a way to weave that information in such a way that ultimately sells your services far better than you could ever sell them by flat out pitching your product/service.
It helps them get to know you and your business better. Because you are not doing a hard sell you will attract more buyers too.
Here are some additional benefits to education-based marketing: you are more respected, you gain the prospect’s trust, you will get more referrals, you can charge a higher price, you are perceived as an expert, you have more influence, you establish more brand loyalty and you do some good!
I’ll leave you with an example of what I mean. You are an accountant that is pitching to small businesses and you say “I’m going to show you why our accounting service is much better than anyone else’s”. This again is ‘me-centric’ and you have lost most of the audience — you are selling them and they know it. If you were to try this “We have a new educational program entitled The 5 reasons most small businesses fail” you have used a wider net and got the attention of mostly everyone. Now in your presentation one of the points would be — the benefits of having a great accounting firm you are more likely to sell them.
It takes a little more time to market your product or service this way but the benefits are great!
